


the art of regret

by revoleotion



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst without plot, Hux is the Javert in this I guess, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Les Misérables References, Reconditioning, prompt from instagram
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23663761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revoleotion/pseuds/revoleotion
Summary: “Thank you for choosing this option,” the voice continues. “This will only take up a few seconds, then your brain is as good as new!”Maybe a new brain could fix everything. Maybe a new brain wouldn’t crack open with every drop of blood and spill out memories of blue dune-skies and, even worse, everlasting rain. A new brain, perhaps with a few pre-installed memories. A mother’s face, not the screams of a planet falling into the enemy’s hands.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	the art of regret

**Author's Note:**

> this is inspired by a prompt by @emery.anemone on Instagram! Thanks again, it took me quite a while

The blood on his hands isn’t even dry yet when they ask him to do the report. Armitage sits down on a chair that smells like antiseptic. His hands are shaking and when he opens his mouth, words come out in incoherent puzzle pieces. His thoughts are too loud and too colorful, a red wrecking ball crushing his brain. 

“I was... was successful,” he starts and winces when one of the men leans closer to him. He can’t see them well in the dark; exhaustion reduces his vision to a tiny tunnel.

“Details, Armitage.”

That’s Brendol’s voice. His disappointed voice, to be exact, and Armitage reacts a little too late. A hand grabs him by the collar like he’s a puppy that is about to be drowned in a pond.

“He’s useless like this,” the voice continues. “Send him to reconditioning first, just make sure you don’t fry what little brain he has.”

He falls back into his chair. The voices continue but they aren’t for him. Someone drags him out of the room. Armitage rubs his hands on his pants but the blood is dry now and he has no idea into what nightmare he’s going to be pushed next.

_children looking up to him like he is about to save them; he isn’t their savior, he’s a dying star and he will take the universe with him_

“Go in there,” one of the men tell him. Armitage is pushed into a small room with blinding lights. Every inch of the cell is visible to him, although there isn’t much too see. A chair, a monitor, a camera above his head. 

Reconditioning. Brendol has never wanted Armitage to participate in anything related to his academy, meaning that Armitage never got the training of a child soldier. Brendol worships the Jedi’s training methods, he studied as much as he could grab with his plump, short fingers. Armitage’s fingers are everything Brendol’s are not. Then again, his figure is the exact opposite of his father as well. He looks down on his legs that always leave out a gap in the middle, no matter how hard he tries to make his thighs touch and rubs his hands on them again. 

He almost flinches when the lights turn off. In the pitch-black void, a small noise creeps closer. He has managed to ignore it so far but now that his sight has been taken away from him, it’s hard not to drown in it. _Loudspeakers_ , he thinks. The sizzling of static, right next to his ear. 

Suddenly, the darkness around him feels like comfort. Armitage curls his fingers and takes a deep breath. He isn’t afraid. Being afraid would take more energy than he has right now. All he can offer is a blank stare into the abyss and the knowledge that everything in life eventually passes, even life itself. 

**_especially_ ** _life itself; there’s blood on his hands._

“ _Welcome_ ,” a voice starts, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s human. It’s cheerful, a tad too cheerful to come off as natural. “ _You are currently in the reconditioning centre. We will check your brain for any abnormalities and calibrate it new when needed._ ”

It’s only when Armitage’s throat starts itching and his lungs start screaming that he notices that he has been holding his breath. He inhales, loud enough to annoy himself with it. He forces his breathing to die down to a volume slightly lower than the briefing. The pain in his chest remains, like he has ruined his lungs forever with a little pause. 

“ _Thank you for choosing this option_ ,” the voice continues. “ _This will only take up a few seconds, then your brain is as good as new_!”

Maybe a new brain could fix everything. Maybe a new brain wouldn’t crack open with every drop of blood and spill out memories of blue dune-skies and, even worse, everlasting rain. A new brain, perhaps with a few pre-installed memories. A mother’s face, not the screams of a planet falling into the enemy’s hands. 

The New Republic is the enemy, he knows that. It’s one of the few things that make sense inside his brain right now. Chaos is to be avoided. He never wants to live through another uprising, another _revolution_ , another planet demanding a place outside the neat order of how things are supposed to be. Order is his home. The First Order, first as in “superior” not “the first one to ever exist”. Armitage knows more about the Empire than about his own life. He can’t tell that he agrees with the old morals and politics, but he knows that everything, _everything_ , is better than disorder. 

“ _Assessment completed. High levels of remorse and guilt detected._ ”

He wouldn’t call it that. He doesn’t have a better word for it either. It’s a collection of memories that weigh him down, the knowledge that being successful means another person’s failure. But he wanted their failure. He needed them to bleed out, bright red, so chaos can’t spread. 

It has been almost too easy to sneak in. Nine students, students who met up in a cafe and talked about politics. They thought they could do something. That freedom and disorder aren’t the same thing. And the child, why did there have to be children? Isn’t it enough that the student’s foolish ideals spread like a plague?

And you can never fully get rid of sickness. They’re dirt underneath Armitage’s fingernails. Worse. They’re the blood on his hands. They shouldn’t have died. There should’ve been another way. He shouldn’t have put a dagger right into their back. 

So, maybe he feels guilty. It’s not like he didn’t do a good job. 

_he did a good job; he did something right; he’s more than a piece of paper; he’s more than a papercut on his father’s finger._

The voice pulls him back. For the first time, he’s thankful for it. 

“ _Excessive empathy can have a variety of reasons. Sometimes, the cause can be a traumatic incident. Studies have shown that genetics play a part as well. This is nothing to be ashamed of. A good soldier doesn’t let empathy hold him or her back from doing what’s necessary._ ”

Armitage almost giggles out loud. He holds it in, causing his body to vibrate with suppressed laughter. He’s not a soldier. He’s the puppy that didn’t drown. He’s the dying star. 

“ _Please prepare yourself for the calibration. It starts in three, two one…_ ”

And then there’s pain, so bright that it overwrites the darkness. Armitage’s brain is on fire. It’s blue, then violet, then all colors at once. 

_is that torture; that is torture; this shouldn’t happen; I’m a child, I’m a child, I’m the chaos; I’m being deleted_

Seconds turn into light years. Armitage digs his fingernails into his palm, more blood, this time his own. He hears screams but it’s not his voice. He’s screaming something out of his body. He can feel himself leaving. 

He screams for his mother but the only answer he gets is the echo of his own pain. 

* * *

“Details, Armitage.”

This time he gives them details. He can’t feel how the name his father gave him cuts deep into his sanity, there’s nothing left of him that cares about it. The words roll off his tongue like the speeches he writes in his head before he goes to sleep. They have no flavor when he releases them, no color. 

“I joined the group of students who planned to stage a revolution,” he says. 

“Terrorists,” another man corrects him. 

Armitage’s brain offers a name but he just nods and whispers, “Yes, Sir.”

“I found out the day they wanted to do the uprising and transferred the data to fathe-- to General Hux. On the day they planned the barricades, they were outnumbered.”

“Are there survivors?” Brendol asks. He leans back in his chair, arms folded above his belly. It costs Armitage all his self-control to maintain eye-contact with him. 

“One,” he says. He remembers him, a boy with red hair and freckles that never fully seemed to stand behind all that chaos. Armitage watched him being dragged away through sewers, into safety that wouldn't last long unless someone threw him into a bacta-tank soon. “Realistically speaking, he is not a treat but I will eliminate him when needed.”

They seem to like that answer. Armitage feels something crawling up his spine. He’s proud, he realizes. And he’s free. There’s no guilt weighing him down, no unnecessary empathy. He can do his job and he can do it well. 

He will rise up. And nothing is going to stop him. 

* * *

He meets him again, later. It’s like running into a stranger. The boy smiles at him, a man now, married. Not less awkward than before but he carries himself like he has stacked the corpses of his friends on his shoulders. Ghosts can weigh heavy on a conscience, at least a conscience that hasn’t been ripped out and replaced, tasered into forgetting how to work.

For a moment, Armitage feels the urge to say something. Not quite a “sorry”, something lighter, not that green. 

“The First Order is gone,” he says instead. 

The man looks at him. 

“How does that feel?”

Armitage can’t remember the last time he has felt anything. 

He doesn’t give him an answer. He looks up to the stars and wonders how he ever ended up here. It feels a little like drowning.


End file.
